


Mother

by Haberdasher



Category: Tangled (2010)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Feels, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Rapunzel Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9422648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: After reuniting with her birth family, Rapunzel still has difficulties surrounding the word "mother".Originally written as part of the Every Single Day challenge. Read more about the challenge here: http://haberdashing.tumblr.com/post/155220938009/





	

Rapunzel had… difficulties with the word mother. Only after leaving captivity, of course; for the first eighteen years of her life, she had applied the word to the woman who had trapped her inside without a second thought, assuming that all mothers were… well, like _her_. But after that, after she learned the truth about her parentage and captivity… things got trickier.

Because that woman (Gothel was her name, they had discovered it while searching through her things, found it on paperwork that looked to be centuries old) never had been her mother, truly, was she?

If mothers were the women who bore you, who gave you life, who spent nine long months nurturing you before you saw the light of day… that was the queen, not Gothel.

If mothers were loving and compassionate, caring for who you are as a person rather than what you could do for them… that certainly wasn’t Gothel, either.

The queen had been there for her the moment she first existed, had spent eighteen years searching for her, had done everything in her power to make sure she felt comfortable and welcome as soon as the two reunited.

The queen, then, was her true mother, even if they barely knew each other at first.

And yet-

And yet when she heard the term, Rapunzel’s mind always first went to a woman with long dark curls, not the queen’s straight brown hair-

And yet trying to call another by that name made her stutter, made her stumble over the word and fret and apologize even as everybody claimed that it was okay, that they understood- but how could they understand when Rapunzel herself didn’t, it was just a word, what was her problem, it was just a word-

And yet just the sound of it brought her back to that tower, made her remember all the times that Gothel had referred to her great sacrifices in raising her, or how mothers always knew best, and her skin crawled at the mere thought-

It hurt the queen not to be called her mother, Rapunzel knew that. She tried to hide it, tried to put on a stoic face, but Rapunzel could see the anguish in the queen’s eyes every time she avoided using the word. It got to the point where Rapunzel would avoid directly addressing the queen altogether, would use no monikers at all so that she didn’t have to use the wrong one.

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate all that the queen had done for her, or that she meant to deny her true parentage, or anything like that, it was just-

What _was_ it?

Rapunzel wasn’t sure, truth be told.

She found an answer to her conundrum while looking through the baby books that her parents had prepared for her use before birth, books that she had never gotten to use (and somehow it felt like her fault, though nobody ever said as much, her fault that she hadn’t put together the pieces sooner, her fault that she hadn’t escaped years ago).

And the next time Rapunzel ran into the queen, she called her Mom.

(Because Gothel had never had Rapunzel call her Mom, had never even allowed her to use such a shortened form- it was juvenile and immature to not bother finishing the word Mother, Gothel had said, and while Rapunzel was clearly both she didn’t have to show it so blatantly.)

And the queen started crying, but when Rapunzel stumbled over an apology she explained that nothing was wrong, that her tears were not from sorrow but from joy.

Rapunzel embraced her mom, and the two hugged for a good long time.


End file.
